MURDER  and  LIBERTY 


'PRINTED  FOR  THE  FIRST  TIME  IN  1853,  AS  A CONTRIBUTION 
FOR  THE  “PEACE  LEAGUE”  OF  GENEVA.) 


BY 


KARL  HEINZEN. 


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MURDER  AND  LIBERTY. 


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(PRINTED  FOR  THE  FIRST  TIME  IN  1853.) 

A CONTRIBUTION  FOR  THE  “ PEACE-LEAGUE  ” 
OF  GENEVA. 


There  are  a number  of  technical  expressions  for  the 
important  manipulation  by  which  one  man  destroys  the 
life  of  another.  There  are : kill,  murder,  shoot,  slay,  poi- 
son, put  out  of  the  world,  deport  to  Cayenne,  put  out  of 
the  way,  behead,  strangulate,  garrote,  cut  down,  put  to 
the  sword,  fusilade,  incarcerate  for  life,  execute,  etc.  The 
means,  the  pretexts,  and  the  causes  differ ; but  the  object 
is  always  the  same,  viz.,  the  annihilation  of  a hostile  or 
inconvenient  human  life.  From  the  stand-point  of  justice 
and  humanity,  the  destruction  of  the  life  of  another  is 
always  unjust  and  barbarous,  whether  it  occur  on  the 
scaffold  or  in  battle,  in  the  murderer’s  den  or  on  the 
dueling  grounds,  in  prison  or  on  the  street.  The  lan- 
guage of  humanity  has,  therefore,  no  concern  for  the  sub- 
tle differences  by  which  the  dominant  barbarity  claims 
on  the  one  hand  as  permissible  killing,  what  it  condemns 
on  the  other  hand  as  punishable  murder.  Humanity 
must  absolutely  condemn  all  killing,  since  she  refers  all 
hostile  conflicts  among  men  to  the  tribunal  of  reason, 
and  not  to  that  of  force ; she  is,  therefore,  only  consistent 
if  she  designates  every  voluntary  annihilation  of  the  life 
of  another  human  being  with  the  condemnatory  term 


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murder.  Her  only  endeavor  can  be  to  abolish  murder; 
yet,  as  long  as  murder  offers  the  only  means  for  the  at- 
tainment of  this  object,  Humanity  is  also  compelled  to 
draw  the  sword  and  to  become  the  murderess  of  the 
murderers.  If  one  man  is  permitted  to  murder,  all  must 
be  permitted  to  do  so,  particular}'  those  who  practice  it 
for  the  annihilation  of  the  murderers  by  profession  or  “by 
the  grace  of  God.” 

Only  stupid  weakness  would  elude  with  sentimental 
lamentations  the  significance  of  the  stupendous  fact  that 
murder  in  the  most  colossal  dimensions  has  been  and 
still  is  the  chief  means  of  historical  development.  Cold 
reason  must  acknowledge  this  fact,  must  expose  it  in  all 
its  nakedness,  and  discover  its  unavoidable  consequences. 

Half  the  history  of  the  world  is  a history  of  murder. 
On  every  leaf  there  are  lines  of  blood,  and,  if  we  com- 
pare the  combats  of  men  with  those  of  animals,  we  may 
well  treat  the  history  of  the  world  as  a continuation 
of  Natural  History.  The  main  difference  between  the 
human  and  the  animal  history  of  murder  is  to  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  men,  at  least  so  far  as  they  call  them- 
selves “civilized”,  murder  one  another  merely  for  the 
sake  of  putting  one  another  out  of  the  way,  while  ani- 
mals do  it  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  food.  To  the  latter 
the  murdered  animal  is  at  the  same  time  an  acquired 
prey,  to  man  the  murdered  man  is  a removed  obstruc- 
tion. The  animal  must  murder,  and  will  always  be 
compelled  to  do  so  in  order  to  live ; man  murders  as 
long  as  he  is  a brute  or  treats  others  as  brutes. 

You  object,  Honorable  Judge  of  the  Criminal  Court 
that  man  is  distinguished  from  the  brute  by  making 
murder  an  atonement  for  crimes  against  fellow'-men  or  for 
“treasonable  assaults”;  that  he  sanctifies  it,  as  it  were,  as 


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“death-penalty.”  But  I cannot  grant  you  even  this  wretched 
satisfaction,  for  there  are  social  animals(e.  g.  the  cranes), 
which  have,  like  us,  their  capital  crimes,  and  which  ex- 
ecute upon  the  criminals  the  “ death-penalty  ” in  optima 
forma  and  even  in  corpore.  Again  you  doubtlessly  know 
that  the  bees  murder  the  drones,  which  in  their  com- 
munity represent  about  the  same  thing  as  courtiers, 
officers,  and  other  idlers  and  dead-beats  in  the  State 
of  Prussia.  You,  on  the  other  hand,  my  dear  Lieutenant, 
are  of  the  opinion  that  regular  war  is  something  specific- 
ally human,  and  that  there  are  no  animals  that  murder 
in  armies.  This,  too,  I cannot  concede  to  you;  I can, 
at  best,  leave  you  the  proud  consciousness  that  animals 
have  no  articles  of  war,  no  drill  exercises,  and  no  par- 
ades, while  on  the  other  hand,  they  are  perfectly  alike  in 
uniforms.  Read  in  Oken’s  Natural  History  the  interesting 
accounts  of  the  battles  which  ants  engage  in  with  armies 
almost  as  numerous  as  the  Prussian  and  Russian  armies. 
You  will  admire  the  military  talent  of  these  diminutive 
savages,  and  at  the  same  time,  regret  that  they  are  not 
sufficiently  large  and  intelligent  to  make  you  or  the  great 
W rangel  general-in-chief. 

Honorable  Judge  and  dear  Lieutenant,  the  only  kind 
of  murder  by  which  man  differs  from  the  brute,  and 
which,  at  the  same  time, — with  murder  in  self-defence — 
has  reason  and  justice  on  its  side  is  called  “self-murder”. 
The  life  of  a man  belongs  only  to  himself,  and  only 
he  has  the  right  to  destroy  it.  This  is  not  only  his  right, 
but  it  may  be,  too,  his  greatness.  If  an  unavoidable  dis- 
grace that  would  destroy  his  character,  or  an  inevitable 
misfortune  that  would  render  his  life  useless,  should 
threaten  him,  he  is  not  to  be  blamed  if  he  makes  an 
end  of  his  life  in  cold  blood.  The  character  of  Niobe 


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does  not  suit  every  hopelessness,  and  a male  Niobe  were 
the  height  of  absurdity.  Cleopatra,  who,  in  spite  of  her 
royalty  and  fratricide,  is  a greater  woman  than  she  is  u- 
sually  regarded,  put  an  asp  to  her  bosom  in  order  not 
to  be  disgraced  by  Octavian  to  serve  for  display  in  his 
triumphal  procession.  The  younger  Cato  pierced  him- 
self with  his  sword,  because  after  Caesar’s  victory  he 
could  not  live  any  longer  “without  becoming  false  to  his 
principles”.  Brutus  and  Cassius,  the  “last  Romans”,  took 
their  own  lives,  because  the  battle  of  Philippi  put  an 
end  to  the  republican  cause.  When  Caecinna  Pietus, 
pursued  for  conspiracy  against  Claudius,  had  no  other 
means  of  escape  but  death,  his  faithful  wTife  Arria 
plunged  the  dagger  into  her  own  bosom  and  then  hand- 
ed the  weapon  to  her  husband  with  the  famous  words : 
“Paetus,  it  pains  not”.  Robespierre  tried  to  shoot  him- 
self when,  after  his  second  imprisonment,  he  was  threat- 
ened with  death  by  the  guillotine  of  the  moderate  par- 
ty. The  fourteen  delegates  of  the  Convention , who  in  the 
year  1795,  joined  with  the  people  in  the  demand  for 
“bread  and  the  Constitution  of  1793”,  and  who  for  this 
were  condemned  to  death,  stabbed  themselves  with  one 
and  the  same  knife  exclaiming:  “Long  live  the  Republic”. 
The  Hungarian  revolutionist  May,  killed  himself  in  pri- 
son in  the  most  painful  manner  by  burning  himself  to 
death,  in  order  to  escape  the  inquisitorial  torture  of  his 
foes. 

You  see,  Honorable  -Judge  and  dear  Lieutenant,  these 
are — outside  of  the  murder  for  self-defence — instances  of 
the  only  permissible  and  just  kind  of  murder.  If,  after  the 
Milanese  insurrection,  Mazzini  had  fallen  into  the  hands 
of  the  Austrian  hangmen,  he  w’ould  surely  have  made  use 
of  the  poison  which  in  all  probability  he  carried  with 


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him  for  this  purpose.  Would  you  have  blamed  him? 
Would  you,  in  his  place,  have  permitted  the  deputy- 
hangmen  of  Radetzky  to  put  you  on  the  rack  and  to  lay 
the  rope  around  your  necks?  Be  just,  and  I shall  be 
just  towards  you ; I shall  not  claim  self-murder  as  a 
revolutionary  privilege,  as  you  claim  the  murder  of  others 
as  a reactionary  privilege ; I shall,  therefore,  grant  you 
the  right  to  end  your  wretched  existences  with  your  own 
hands  at  the  beginning  of  the  revolution.  Nay,  I shall 
even  concede  to  your  high  masters  the  right  to  save 
themselves  from  the  lantern-posts,  like  Nero,  by  suicide, 
or  to  burn  themselves  like  Sardanapalus  with  their 
mistresses  and  slaves  in  their  palaces. 

The  large,  bloodstained  picture  which  we  call  history 
shows  us  murder  in  a thousand  forms,  and  the  murder- 
ers under  a thousand  names.  Sometimes  it  is  called  war, 
and  the  murderers  heroes;  sometimes  it  is  called  insur- 
rection, and  the  murderers  are  called  the  people ; again 
it  is  called  assassination,  and  the  murderers  are  called 
bandits,  etc.  It  is  always  the  same  simple  object,  viz: 
to  neutralize  opposition  by  destroying  human  life;  accord- 
ing to  the  motives  and  circumstances,  it  meets  with 
different  criticism  which  as  a rule  is  wholly  perverse  and 
servile.  The  principles  of  justice  remain  unchanged  in 
history;  but  their  recognition  is  possible  only  to  free  judg- 
ment for  which  reason  they  are  sometimes  wholly  ob- 
scured for  long  periods.  The  judgment  of  men  is,  usu- 
ally ruled,  nay,  entirely  suppressed,  by  the  ' prevailing 
fact,  so  that  they  acknowledge  even  the  prevailing  mur- 
der, in  spite  of  its  injustice,  while  they  condemn  the  con- 
quered murder,  in  spite  of  all  justice.  In  order  to  attain 
clearness  concerning  murder,  in.  order  to  find  practical 
data  for  a correct  judgment  of  the  same,  let  us  first  view' 
a few  groups  of  the  great  blood  drama  of  history. 


6 


The  first  kind  of  murder,  1 would  call  the  murder 
of  destruction  proceeding  from  the  mere  passion  of  annihil- 
ation. At  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  by  the  Romans 
a million  Jews  were  murdered.  At  the  destruction  of 
Carthage  by  the  same  heroes,  out  of  seven  hundred  thou- 
sand inhabitants  only  fifty  thousand  were  spared.  The 
Spaniards  and  others  slaughtered  millions  of  men  in 
America  without  necessity  and  without  any  rational  ob- 
ject. And  how  many  millions  of  these  unfortunate  wretch- 
es who  are  called  slaves  were  brutally  murdered  in 
antiquity  as  well  as  in  our  times  in  the  holds  of  vessels, 
on  plantations,  and  in  prisons. 

Almost  as  murderous  as  the  struggles  of  destruction 
were  the  so-called  pitched  battles.  In  the  battle  of  Cannae, 
sixty  thousand  Romans  are  said  to  have  been  killed. 
In  the  battle  of  Chalons  in  which  Aetius  overcame  Attila, 
one  hundred  and  six  thousand  men  fell.  Thus  every  “hero’' 
in  the  thousands  of  battles  which  fill  history  counts  his 
murderous  deeds  by  thousands  and  hundred  of  thousands. 
The  nations,  “the  soldiers,”  are  usually  regarded  as  blood- 
hounds and  food  for  cannons.  “Ye  hounds,  would  ye 
live  forever?”  roared  Frederick  the  Great  when  they  hes- 
itated before  the  enemy.  Only  by  millions  can  the 
corpses  be  summed  up,  with  which  the  great  men  of  his- 
tory from  Alexander  down  to  Napoleon  manured  their 
laurel  fields.  Napoleon  alone  dispatched  several  million 
men  to  the  kingdom  of  Death  in  order  to  be  ruler  of  the 
survivors,  and  this  mastery  in  murder  earned  for  him  the 
title  of  The  Great. 

As  stupendous  as  stupidity  itself  is  also  the  number 
of  victims  which  the  murder  of  stupidity  has  demanded, 
i.  e.  the  murder  which  men  have  committed  on  entire 
nations  for  the  sake  of  their  human  and  superhuman 


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idols.  Perhaps  in  history  more  subjects  have  fallen  than 
soldiers,  and  more  believers  than  barbarians.  The  cru- 
sades to  the  “grave  of  the  Redeemer”,  were  in  fact  only 
the  funeral  procession  of  several  million  believers  to  their 
own  graves.  The  Thirty  Years  War,  the  war  in  which 
our  ancestors  during  thirty  years  contended  for  the  honor 
of  being  in  possession  of  the  greatest  stupidity,  deprived 
Germany  of  about  four  million  human  beings. 

The  murder  of  stupidity,  the  murder  of  subjects  and 
believers,  is  properly  followed  by  the  murder  of  torture 
and  vengeance,  the  murder  by  secular  and  spiritual  tyrants, 
as  such.  Let  us  pass  over  millions  of  victims  that  have 
been  cut  down  by  the  wrath  of  tyrants,  and  confine  our- 
selves to  mass  executions.  After  the  final  victory  of 
Crassus  over  the  slaves  under  Spartacus,  6000  of  the  latter 
were  nailed  to  a double  row  of  crosses  that  adorned  the 
road  from  Rome  to  Capua.  Trajanus  after  his  victory 
over  the  Dacians  ordered  ten  thousand  slaves  to  appear 
as  gladiators  in  the  circus  of  Rome  and  to  contend  with 
11,000  wild  beasts,  i.  e.  he  ordered  for  mere  pleasure  an 
army  of  men  and  an  army  of  beasts  to  murder  each 
other.  Potemkin  had  30,000  Tartars,  (men,  women,  and 
children)  seized  and  massacred,  because  they  would  not 
“do  homage”  to  the  Empress  Catherine.  Alba  had  18,000 
men  “executed”  in  the  Netherlands.  Charlemagne  (Charles 
“the  Great”)  exterminated  almost  the  whole  Saxon  people 
in  order  to  convert  them  to  Christianity.  The  “Christians” 
murdered  several  hundred  thousand  Albigenses;  in  the 
city  of  Bezieres  alone  60000  of  them  were  cut  down.  By 
means  of  the  inquisition,  the  priests  murdered  hundreds 
of  thousands  in  cold  blood.  At  the  massacre  of  St. 
Bartholomew  in  Paris,  on  account  of  which  the  annoint- 
ed  chief  murderer  in  Rome,  the  Pope,  decreed  a jubilee, 


8 


30.000  Protestants  were  murdered.  In  the  Peasant-wars 
of  Germany  150,000  peasants  were  murdered.  If  we 
examine  the  murder  register  of  history,  we  find  the 
majority  of  murders  placed  to  the  account  of  Christ- 
ianity, the  religion  of  love.  In  the  name  of  Christianity 
more  human  beings  have  been  dispatched  to  the  “ world 
beyond  ” than  are  left  of  faithful  Christians  in  this  world, 
so  that  Christ  indeed  showed  a wonderful  foresight,  when 
he  said,  “my  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world”;  he  might 
have  said,  “my  kingdom  is  the  cemetery.” 

Of  the  whole  mumber  of  human  beings  of  this  earth, 
estimated  at  one  thousand  millions,  every  second  one 
dies;  and  it  is  fair  to  assume  that  in  the  five  principal 
divisions,  at  least  one  is  murdered  every  minute,  which 
would  make  for  every  day  1440  or  in  round  numbers 
1500,  and  for  every  year  547,500  or  in  round  numbers 

550.000  murders.  Now  even  if  in  counting  back  into  the 
past  we  must  assume  the  number  of  human  beings  as 
steadily  diminishing,  we  find  on  the  other  hand  at  the 
same  time,  the  cruelty  steadily  increasing,  so  that  we 
are  justified  in  assuming  for  the  era  of  history  500,000 
murders  for  each  year.  This  makes  for  nearly  four 
thousand  years  the  respectable  sum  of  2,000,000,000 
murders  by  which  the  “images  of  God”  have  put  each 
other  out  of  the  world.  If  we  omit  the  priests,  the  arist- 
ocrats, and  the  princes,  this  number  is  reduced  to  an  in- 
significant series  of  individual  murders,  It  would  be  a 
work  of  amazing  tediousness  to  prove  the  correctness  of 
the  sum  here  given  in  the  details  of  its  numbers  through 
the  history  of  all  wars,  battles,  migrations  of  nations,  con- 
quests, suppresions,  executions,  in  short,  of  all  the  kinds 
of  murder  and  expeditions  of  murder.  I have,  therefore, 
confined  myself  to  a few  prominent  instances  which  a 


9 


hasty  survey  of  history  suggested  to  me.  Much  has  also 
been  contributed  by  the  million-fold  murders  through 
misery,  want,  and  neglect,  which  however  must  all  ulti- 
mately be  accredited  to  the  account  of  the  chief  murderers 
or  originators  of  murder — the  princes,  priests,  and  aristo- 
crats. The  black  lenten  cloth  that  is  spread  over  the  ta- 
ble of  the  starving  is  made  from  the  shroud  of  their  an- 
cestors ; and  every  shroud  of  history  is  stamped  with  the 
arms  of  some  prince,  knight,  or  priest. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  contingent  of  murders  which  has 
been  furnished  by  the  opponents  of  the  princes,  aristocrats, 
and  priests,  by  the  champions  of  justice  and  truth,  is  quite 
insignificant.  The  revolution  has  committed  at  most  one 
single  murder  to  50,000  murders  of  the  reaction.  In  the 
insurrection  which  Mithridates  incited  in  Asia  Minor. 
150,000  Romans  are  said  to  have  fallen.  This  is  the 
grandest  instance  of  a just  vengeance  that  I can  remem- 
ber; but  a king  was  needed  to  give  it,  and,  in  compar- 
ison with  the  cruelties  of  the  Romans,  it  is  insignificant. 
In  the  wars  with  Spartacus,  more  Romans  are  said  to  have 
fallen  than  in  the  Punic  wars;  but  if  “all”  had  fallen, 
still  this  fate  could  not  have  compensated  for  one 
half  their  guilt.  Again  what  signify  the  few  thousand 
executions  of  the  French  Revolution  in  comparison  with 
the  millions  of  murders  of  the  centuries  of  reactionary 
dominion  which  brought  about  that  popular  explosion? 
I remind  the  reader  among  other  things  of  the  fact  that 
at  the  outbreak  of  that  revolution  several  million  victims 
of  the  despots  and  priests  filled  the  dungeons  of  Europe. 
What  signify  the  daggers  of  Harmodius  and  Brutus,  or 
the  arrow  of  Tell,  or  the  attempt  of  Fieschi  and  Alibaud 
in  comparison  with  the  numberless  murders  by  which 
the  tyrants  put  their  opponents  out  of  the  way  in 


10 


all  conceivable  manners?  What  signifies  the  knife  of  the 
gallant  Libeny,  one  of  the  greatest  of  Hungarian  heroes 
(who  very  significantly  wanted  to  stab  the  Austrian  Nero 
in  the  neck  like  a wild  beast),  in  comparison  with  the 
thousand-fold  butcheries  of  this  young  beast  in  Hungary 
and  Italy?  Does  not  such  a beast  deserve  to  be  mur- 
dered by  inches  together  with  all  his  accomplices?  Caesar, 
Tiberius,  Caligula,  Claudius,  Galba,  Otho,  Vitellius  were 
murdered.  From  Commodus  to  Constantine  the  Great,  '27 
out  of  36  emperors  were  murdered.  Of  all  these  assassin- 
ations of  tyrants,  only  the  smallest  share  is  to  be  attrib- 
uted to  friends  of  freedom  or  revolutionists;  but  suppose, 
they  were  all  committed  by  them,  — are  they  worth  men- 
tioning in  comparison,  with  the  mass-destruction  of 
human  life  that  proceeded  from  these  tyrants?  How  many 
human  beings,  did  Sulla  murder!  But  he  went  unpun- 
ished after  he  had  laid  down  the  dictatorship,  and  lice 
had  to  perform  executioner’s  duty  on  him  — men  in 
their  degeneracy  had  failed  to  do  it.  The  triumvirs, 
Antonius,  Octavius,  and  Lepidus  had  among  others  300 
senators  and  2000  knights  on  their  death  list.  Where  have 
revolutionists  ever  conspired  for  such  a butchery?  Just 
this  weakness  has  always  been  the  main  fault  of  the  rev- 
olutionists, that,  in  ill-conceived  humanity  and  devoid 
of  energy,  they  spared  the  lives  of  incurable  reactionaries, 
or  that,  blinded  by  the  unreasonable  joy  over  the  seem- 
ing victories  of  their  cause,  they  failed  to  gain  it  in  real- 
ity, or,  at  least,  to  secure  it  by  the  complete  annihilation 
of  their  enemies.  Called  to  exercise  the  functions  of 
Goddess  of  Justice  towards  all  the  enemies  of  the  people, 
they  dropped  the  sword  of  the  Goddess  from  their  hands 
at  the  first  blow,  and  kept  only  her  blindness.  A revo- 
lutionist in  whose  power  it  lay  to  annihilate  all  the  rep- 


11 


resentatives  of  the  system  of  violence  and  murder  which 
rules  the  world  and  lays  it  waste,  would  deserve  a thou- 
sand-fold the  traitor’s  death,  if  he  hesitated  but  a moment. 

Animated  by  the  hope  that  very  soon  an  opportunity 
will  offer  to  heed  this  warning,  let  us  throw  a cursory 
glance  upon  the  murder-history  of  our  time. 

Frederick  William  IV.,  this  Falstafif  among  Neroes, — 
together  with  his  brother,  this  corporal  among  princes  — 
every  inch  a brute — had  the  citizens  of  Berlin  shot  down 
by  the  hundreds,  because  they  had  become  tired  of  his 
perjuries;  and,  when  the  people  nevertheless  became 
victorious,  the  royal  murders  were  changed  into  “mis- 
understandings.” A still  greater  number  of  murders,  and 
still  more  shameful,  the  same  hypocrite  ordered  to  be 
conmitted  in  Saxony  and  Baden;  only  they  were  not  mis- 
understandings here,  because  the  people  was  conquered. 
The  summit  of  murderous  infamy  he  ascended  in 
Schleswig-Holstein  where  lie  had  friends  and  foes  murdered 
by  thousands  in  the  name  of  patriotic  honor,  in  the  most 
atrocious  treachery  that  the  world  has  ever  seen,  in  or- 
der to  harvest  patriotic  disgrace  as  the  murderer’s  prize 
when  the  treachery  had  been  accomplished.  In  the  pres- 
ent lord  and  master  of  Berlin,  Prussian  politics  has  found 
the  fullest  expression,  its  most  speaking  impersonation  : 
malice  protected  by  hypocrisy,  cowardice  protected  by 
treachery,  crime  protected  by  murder.  Vengeance  ! 

Francis  Joseph,  the  young  monster,  born  of  a Serene 
Hyena  and  fed  upon  the  blood  of  martyrs,  at  the  same 
time  unnerved  by  lust  before  he  reached  the  age  of  ma- 
turity, reminds  us  of  those  broken  down  Romans  who 
drank  the  blood  of  slaves,  in  order  to  refresh  their  wasted 
powers.  How  many  murders  are  already  heaped  upon  the 
head  of  this  young  Austran  criminal  and  his  old  accom- 


12 


plices ! His  hoary  executioner  Radetzky  alone  has  had 
4000  men  of  freedom  murdered  singly  by  the  process  of 
“martial  law.”  Austria,  together  with  Hungary  and  Italy, 
are  tranformed  into  one  great  slaughter-house,  with  one 
enormous  scaffold,  on  which  day  and  night  thousands 
of  executioners  with  their  assistants  keep  up  the  work  of 
murder  in  the  name  of  a boy-knave,  in  whose  way  the 
lantern-post  of  his  murderous  servant  Latour  still  waits 
in  vain  for  a nobler  ornament.  Vengeance!  Vengeance! 

The  third  in  the  league  is  the  monster  at  St.  Peters- 
burg, this  grand-sire  of  the  murder  of  nations.  At  every 
step  he  passes  over  corpses,  and  his  throne,  like  the  tro- 
phies of  Tamerlane,  is  built  from  the  bones  of  the  mur- 
dered. His  every  word  is  a sentence  of  death,  and  his 
icy  breath  emits  treachery  and  murder,  by  which  he 
aims  to  make  all  Europe  a cemetery  of  despotism  and 
a desert  of  cruelty.  He  is  more  fortunate  than  his  pre- 
decessors, inasmuch  as  he  has  carried  on  his  murderous 
trade  for  twenty-five  years  without  being  himself  mur- 
dered. Perhaps  his  execution  is  reserved  for  the  people 
or  foreign  nations,  while  it  was  carried  out  upon  his 
predecessors  by  the  guardians  of  their  palace.  Unfor- 
tunately it  is  too  small  a satisfaction,  to  see  the  god  of 
the  Cossacks  and  Calmucks  one  of  these  days  hanging 
from  a lantern-post  or  dragged  through  the  blood  of  his 
servile  fellow-murderers  by  the  horse  of  a Hungarian  or 
a Pole.  Vengeance!  Vengeance!  Vengeance! 

These  three  criminals  are  the  representatives  of  that 
Christian  company  of  murderers  which  is  called  the  Holy 
Alliance  and  which  wanted  to  realize  the  “religion  of  love 
and  peace”  in  politics.  Their  peace  is  that  of  the  ceme- 
tery, and  from  all  the  graves  in  Europe  millions  of  the 
victims  of  their  “love”  cry  for  vengeanc.  Murder  only  is 


13 


their  origin,  murder  their  politics,  and  death  their  “bliss”. 
Blood  is  their  alpha  and  omega,  blood  is  their  end  and 
their  means,  blood  their  joy  and  their  life,  blood  their 
dream  and  their  pursuit,  blood  is  their  principle,  and 
blood  must  be  their  end.  Blood  is  the  ink  with  which 
the  Holy  Alliance  translated  the  “religion  of  love”  into 
politics;  with  equally  bloody  characters,  the  revolution 
must  write  its  death-sentence.  Blood  and  murder  alone 
can  underlie  the  ethics,  where  hanging  and  butchering 
alone  constitute  the  politics. 

Under  the  auspices  of  these  three  allied  arch-mur- 
derers the  various  smaller  tyrants  have,  for  the  last  thir- 
ty years,  practiced  the  murderer’s  trade  with  all  diligence, 
from  the  botanist  at  Dresden  who  manured  his  flower- 
beds with  blood,  to  the  grave-digger  at  Naples  who  trans- 
formed one  half  of  his  lands  into  graves  for  the  dead,  and 
the  other  half  into  graves  for  the  living. 

With  the  cross  in  one  hand  and  the  sword  in  the 
other,  the  bandit  in  Paris  has  at  last  joined  them,  that 
pavvenu  in  the  murderers’  profession,  who  took  his  way 
to  the  throne  over  the  corpses  of  women  and  children. 
From  Paris  to  Larnbessa^  from  Rome  to  Cayenne  the 
traces  of  his  murderous  hand  extend.  This  mixture  of  a 
bandit,  a jesuit,  and  a vagabond  has  surpassed  even  his 
legitimate  models  in  treacherous  malice  and  murderous 
unscrupulousness. 

And  what  do  we  learn  from  the  success  that  has  so 
far  attended  this  murderer,  and  that  has  subverted  all 
ideas  of  ethics  and  all  the  teachings  of  justice?  That  a 
revolution  in  which  only  the  blood  of  the  revolutionists  was 
shed , was  a folly,  a crime,  whose  punishment  made  a reign 
of  bloody  insolence  and  unscrupulous  decision  neces- 
sary. The  blood  of  reactionaries  is  always  spared  only  at 


14 


the  expense  of  the  revolutionists.  Every  revolution  com- 
mits suicide,  if  it  shuns  the  responsibility  of  murdering 
the  reaction.  France  atones  for  her  sins  of  omission  more 
than  her  sins  of  commission.  Let  her  do  pennance  at 
the  graves  of  Robespiere  and  of  Barere,  who  has  sensibly 
said:  “Only  the  dead  do  not  return”.  He  might  have  add- 
ed: “Only  the  dead  do  not  lie  nor  murder  any  more.” 
The  French  Revolution  was  hurried  in  this  as  well  as 
in  the  last  century  by  the  Emigration.  Let  it  be  attend- 
ed to  that  next  time  there  can  be  no  emigration , unless  it  can 
be  safely  stowed  away  in  some  remote  corner  of  the  world. 

From  the  bandit  in  Paris,  we  pass  to  his  protege  at 
Rome.  Ought  not  the  Pope  to  go  to  Paris?  It  were  a great 
loss  for  the  history  of  murder,  if  the  bloody  hand  of  jesuit- 
ism  should  refuse  to  annoint  the  bloody  head  of  allied 
banditism  with  the  sacred  oil  of  damnation.  From  the 
graves  of  two  republics  the  cadaverous  smell  rises  as  a 
sacrificial  odor  around  the  two  consecrated  heads,  and 
the  curses  from  the  lips  of  the  murdered  furnish  the  ac- 
companiment of  vengeance  for  the  Te  Deum  of  their  glory. 
Christ  died  on  the  cross,  yet  he  had  not  murdered  any 
one ; the  hand  of  his  last  “successor”  drips  with  the  blood 
of  the  murdered,  and  he  still  lives,  lives  on  a Golgotha 
of  champions  of  freedom.  If  he  were  crucified,  more  than 
two  criminals  would  hang  by  his  side  to  whom  he  might 
cry:  “Soon  you  will  be  with  me  in — hell”.  His  lips  pro- 
nounce a “blessing”  upon  every  treachery,  every  atrocity, 
every  wholesale  murder  — surely  no  inappropriate  use 
of  this  “blessing”;  his  entire  remaining  mission  is  limited 
to  the  occupation  of  putting  to  the  test  by  the  “consecra- 
tion of  every  atrocity  that  wickedness  could  invent  and 
cruelty  execute,  the  last  residue  of  a superstition  which  a 
priest-hood  of  eighteen  centuries  has  propagated  in  the 


15 


world.  A worthy  end  of  the  successor  of  Christ!  Already 
the  flames  of  vengeance  begin  to  crackle,  that  will  burn 
the  scaffolding  of  tyranny  to  ashes;  and  when  ye  scoundrels 
shall  call  for  help  in  the  flames,  even  the  last  of  your 
followers  will  answer  you  with  words  of  vengeance,  and 
exclaim  : “Do  not  forgive  them,  for  they  knew  what  they 
did!” 

Yes  they  knew  what  they  did.  Let  us  see  to  it,  that 
we  may  also  know  what  we  do! 

We  have  them  now  before  us  in  all  forms,  the  repre- 
sentatives of  murder.  There  they  stand  and  await  our 
judgment  and  our  determination.  They  tell  us  with 
praiseworthy  decision  : “We  did  murder,  we  do  murder, 
and  shall  murder  as  long  as  we  can.  We  murder  in 
order  to  rule,  as  you  must  murder  to  become  free.  No 
more  discussion  is  needed  concerning  the  question  wheth- 
er murder  as  a historical  means  be  a fact  — we  establish 
it ; no  more  discussion  concerning  the  question,  whether 
it  be  an  unavoidable  necessity — we  maintain  it;  no  more 
discussion  concerning  the  question,  whether  it  be  right  — 
we  exercise  it.  Say  what  you  will,  and  do  what  you  can : 
“ The  victor  is  right.” 

Even  so,  the  victor  is  right.  Is  their  a public  opinion 
that  could  reach  the  victors  across  the  sea  on  the  graves 
of  their  victims'?  Is  there  a power,  is  there  a tribunal  that 
could  put  the  brand  on  the  brows  of  these  colossi  of  crime? 
Is  there  a pillory  for  them  to  reach  higher  than  the  feet 
with  which  they  trample  down  all  things?  Does  not  to 
this  day  everybody  call  government  that  which  is  only  the 
rule  of  murder,  the  sword-law  in  its  most  colossal  dimen- 
sions? Not  the  middle  ages  were  the  period  of  sword-law, 


16 


not  until  our  day  did  it  reach  its  blossoming  time;  and  who 
can  check  it?  Are  not  the  murderers,  the  bandits,  recog- 
nized, congratulated,  and  courted  even  by  the  represent- 
atives of  the  republics,  as  soon  as  they  have  mounted  a 
throne?  Where,  then,  is  the  power,  the  public  opinion, 
the  tribunal  that  could  pass  judgment  on  crowned  crime? 
The  victor  is  right,  — this  is  the  wisdom  before  which  all 
bow,  to  which  all  do  homage,  even  the  “highest  judge” 
in  heaven,  and  the  pious  Mr.  Pierce  in  Washington. 

The  reaction  has  only  tools,  only  the  revolution  has 
martyrs.  Yet  even  of  this  privilege  you  have  been  robbed 
by  the  despots ; they  have  increased  the  nnmber  of 
martyrs  so  vastly,  that  martyrdom  has  ceased  to  have  sig- 
nificance. To-day  a martyr  of  liberty  falls  like  a wither- 
ed blossom  from  a tree  — over  night  it  is  blown  away 
and  forgotten  with  thousands  of  others.  The  supremacy 
of  crime,  the  supremacy  of  violence,  the  supremacy  of  the 
sword,  the  rule  of  murder  is  so  fully  recognizsd,  so  well  es- 
tablished, has  become  so  “legal”  and  universal,  that  its 
victims  scarcely  find  a passing  sympathy  in  quiet  con- 
cealment. The  maiden  mourns  the  loss  of  her  lover,  the 
mother  the  loss  of  her  son,  who  — accidentally  was  also  a 
martyr  in  the  cause  of  freedom.  This  closes  the  drama; 
liberty  takes  no  notice  of  it,  and  murder  continues  to  rule 
undisturbed.  Forsooth,  the  victor  is  right,  and — “woe  to 
the  vanquished!”  is  the  only  consolation  of  the  defeated. 

Humanity ! thou  hast  lost  thy  conscience  or  thy  rea- 
son. Thou  doest  recognize  that  the  victor  is  right,  i.  e. 
that  murder  is  right.  Thou  canst  vindicate  thy  conscience 
and  thy  reason,  only  if  thou  wilt  abolish  murder  bv  turn- 
ing upon  all  murderers,  if  thou  wilt  effect  that  right  con- 
trols murder , where  now  murder  controls  right.  Fellow-par- 
tisans of  liberty,  of  juslice,  of  truth,  of  humanity  ! let  our 


17 


study  be  murder , murder  in  every  form.  In  this  word 
there  lies  more  humanity  than  in  all  our  theories;  and  if 
sentimental  psychologists  would  bewilder  you  by  charging 
you  with  heartlessness,  remember  that  the  most  benevo- 
lent statesman,  the  most  humane  character,  the  most 
warm-hearted  of  the  men  of  the  French  Revolution  was  — 
Robespierre. 

Ye  good  people  beyond  the  sea  who  continue  to  per- 
plex jmurselves  with  moral  scruples  to  the  great  satisfac- 
tion of  systematic  immorality,  have  you  not  at  your  gym- 
nasia declaimed  with  the  permission  of  the  highest  au- 
thorities poems  in  which  “Meros,  with  the  dagger  under 
his  cloak,  crept  upon  the  tyrant in  which  the  assassin 
Tell  was  praised  as  liberator,  because  from  safe  ambush  he 
shot  down  the  slave  of  a tyrant  ? Have  you  not  heard  your 
loyal  teachers  praise  Brutus  who  stabbed  his  own  father, 
and  the  “heroic  youths”  Harmodius  and  Aristogiton  who 
murdered  the  tyrant  Hipparchus?  Why  are  these  assassins 
moral  and  great  men  even  in  the  eyes  of  your  own  tyrants 
and  their  legal  and  loyal  schoolmasters?  Because  thejr 
belong  to  the  past  and  not  to  the  present,  to  history  and 
not  to  life?  Translate  them  from  Latin  and  Greek  into 
Russian  and  French,  and  they  will  be  described  as  “mon- 
sters of  immorality”,  although  a Harmodius  would  be 
more  appropriate  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  a Brutus  in  Paris, 
than  in  ancient  Athens  and  Rome.  Nay,  Switzerland 
which  to-day  celebrates  the  memory  of  the  assassin  Tell 
on  the  walls  of  every  house,  all  Switzerland  becomes  the 
object  of  persecution  for  all  the  reactionary  blood -hounds, 
when  a German  Tell  discharges  only  a revolutionary  thought 
arrow  from  his  quiver.  Make  your  own  applications  of 
this  logic.  Neither  the  despots  nor  the  republicans  reject 
murder  as  “immoral,”  but  they  hold  it  to  be  moral,  only 


18 

if  they  practice  it  themselves,  or  it  if  it  serves  their  inter- 
est. 

Just  so  is  it  with  the  judgment  and  practice  of  whole- 
sale murder,  of  organized  murder,  called  war.  They  man- 
age the  morals  of  murder  as  all  other  morals  in  order  to 
fetter  others  thereby,  but  to  tread  them  under  foot  them- 
selves. And  History,  the  “just  judge”  the  “final  doom” 
lags  usually  behind  with  her  judgment  and,  even  then, 
fashions  it  frequently  after  the  will  of  a “victor.”  Gen- 
erally she  teaches  at  best  that  in  the  past  the  most  just  pre- 
vailed, but  in  the  present  the  strongest;  that  in  all  the 
past,  justice  decided,  but  in  the  present  the  strongest;  that 
in  the  past,  justice  decided,  but  in  the  present  the  party ; 
that  in  the  past,  the  ideal  furnished  the  criterion,  but  in 
the  present  expediency;  that  in  the  past  justice  ought  to  have 
prevailed,  but  that  in  the  present  “the  victor  is  right.” 
Finally  she  teaches  that  crime  is  punished  at  the  gallows, 
if  it  is  too  w'eak  to  defend  itself;  but  that  it  is  transform- 
ed into  “right”,  as  soon  as  it  has  the  power  to  vindicate 
itself.  A bandit  with  his  accomplices  renders  some  dis- 
trict insecure.  The  gens  d’armes,  the  “armed  authority”, 
are  called  upon  to  hunt  him  down  and  to  secure  “ re- 
spect” for  the  law.  He  is  captured  and  hung,  in  atone- 
ment for  the  past,  and  as  a warning  for  the  future.  But 
suppose  he  succeeded  in  defeating  the  “armed  authority”, 
in  overthrowing  the  “law”,  in  taking  possession  of  the  land 
and  in  making  himself  its  ruler.  Then  his  “band  ot  rob- 
bers” is  changed  into  an  “army”,  the  “leader  of  bandits" 
becomes  a “general”,  the  “bandit”  is  transformed  into  a 
“king,”  and  the  plundered  population  gradually  grow  into 
loyal  subjects  who  exclaim  with  utmost  enthusiasm  “Long 
live  our  most  gracious  king!”  In  this  manner  all  our 
kings  and  emperors  originated,  and,  in  order  to  remind  us 


19 


of  their  origin  they  have  now  again  become  bandits  openly 
and  without  reserve.  They  rely  upon  it : the  victor  is 
right,  in  spite  of  murder  and  robbery.  But  if  even  that 
victor  is  “right”  who  in  truth  is  in  the  wrong,  how  much 
more  must  he  be  “right”  who  in  truth  has  a right  cause. 
By  whatever  means  he  may  have  gained  victory,  — the 
victory  alone  decides.  Whether  we  gain  the  victory  by 
powder  or  by  poison,  by  the  sword  or  the  dagger,  by 
fulminating  silver  or  by  cannon  — the  difference  is  not 
worth  a hair.  Only  conquer,  only  annihilate  the  ene- 
my — that  is  the  only  point  of  view.  History  will  judge 
us  in  accordance  with  this,  and  our  fate  will  only  be  de- 
cided by  the  use  we  make  of  our  victory , not  by  the  man- 
ner of  gaining  it  over  enemies  who  have  banished  every 
humane  consideration  from  the  world. 

The  greatest  of  all  follies  of  the  world  is  the  belief 
that  it  is  possible  to  commit  a crime  against  despots  and 
their  accomplices.  This  very  belief,  indeed,  is  a crime. 
It  were  a crime  to  spare  the  tiger  that  rages  among  a 
society  of  defenceless  persons,  if  any  one  could  shoot  him 
down.  The  despots  are  out-lawed  like  tigers.  The  des- 
pots belong  to  the  animal  kingdom.  As  the  despots  and 
their  accomplices  consider  themselves  licensed  to  do  any- 
thing, be  it  treachery,  poison,  assassination  or  what  not, — 
it  is  permissible  to  do  everything  against  the  despots  and 
their  helpers,  be  it  treachery,  poison,  assassination  or  what 
not.  Indeed,  a “crime”  directed  against  them  is  not  only 
a right,  but  also  a duty  of  every  one  who  has  an  opportun- 
ity to  commit  it;  and  it  will  be  accounted  his  glory,  if  he 
is  successful.  Only  human  beings  have  an  ethics  of  con- 
siderations; for  brutes  there  is  only  an  ethics  of  destruction'. 
In  freedom,  in  true  democracy  alone,  there  can  be  a per- 
fect code  of  ethics,  and  here  the  use  of  violence  is  a crime 


20 


against  the  whole  people;  but  the  supremacy  of  violence 
is  a charter  for  every  “immorality”  by  which  it  can  be 
annihilated.  The  “laws”  of  despots  are  only  decrees  of 
the  sword;  their  “property”  is  only  booty;  their  punish- 
is  simply  “murder.”  No  one  can  commit  a “crime” 
against  their  “laws;”  no  man  of  the  people  can  “rob” 
them  of  their  “property”;  by  striking  down  their  murder- 
ous chiefs,  the  revolutionist  becomes,  only  a liberator  of 
mankind. 

In  all  struggles  between  the  reaction  and  the  revo- 
lution, it  is  self-evident  that  the  reaction  is  the  only  ag- 
gressive partjr.  Revolution  is  only  self-defence.  Murder 
in  self-defence  is  not  only  permitted,  but  is  also  a duty 
to  society,  when  it  is  directed  against  a professional  mur- 
derer. The  fault  of  self-defence,  as  well  as  of  the  revolu- 
tion, usually  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  satisfied  with  the 
immediate  results  without  using  its  victory  to  secure 
guarantees  for  the  future.  A bandit  attacks  a traveler 
and  is  disarmed  by  him,  but  allowed  to  live;  this  gives 
the  bandit  an  opportunity  to  make  surer  work  of  the 
traveler  next  time,  and  jeopardizes  also  the  lives  of  his 
friends.  Just  so  with  the  revolution.  It  is  folly  and 
self-betrayal,  if  it  limits  self-defence  to  the  result  of  the 
moment.  It  must  root  out  the  reaction  in  its  carriers,  its 
representatives;  for  its  enemies  are  incurable,  like  the  mere- 
ly disarmed  bandit,  like  the  spared  tiger.  We  know  our 
enemies,  we  know  them  all  and  in  every  place  person- 
ally. There  will  be  no  more  excuse,  if  they  are  again 
spared.  Whoever  stands  beyond  the  line  that  separates 
the  ruling  powers  from  the  people,  is  doomed.  Let  the 
people  execute  the  sentence,  and  let  them  spare  only 
those  who  were  misled,  compelled,  or  powerless. 

The  road  to  humanity  leads  over  the  summit  of  cru- 


21 


elty.  This  is  the  inexorable  law  of  necessity  dictated  to 
us  by  the  reaction.  We  cannot  evade  it,  unless  we  would 
renounce  the  future.  If  we  would  accomplish  the  end, 
we  must  use  the  means.  If  we  would  secure  the  life  of 
the  people,  we  must  secure  the  death  of  its  enemies ; if 
we  would  vindicate  humanity,  we  must  not  shrink  — from 
murder. 

There  are  famous  leaders  of  the  revolution,  who  pos- 
sessess  means  and  influence.  Ask  them,  if  they  approve 
of  murder?  They  would  turn  away  with  horror,  because 
they  do  not  wish  to  lose  credit  for  “morality”,  because 
they  want  to  be  “genteel”  revolutionists.  They  are  reac- 
tionaries, genteel  traitors.  They  fashion  their  ethics  in 
accordance  with  the  judgment  of  those  who  oppose  the  revolution. 
The  respect  of  the  Philistines,  old  women,  and  reactiona- 
ries is  of  more  value  to  them  than  the  stand-point,  the 
purpose  of  the  revolution.  With  their  means  and  their 
influence  they  could  make  murder  a cause  of  the  peo- 
ple, they  might  have  annihilated  the  chief  representatives 
of  murder  long  ago,  and  thereby  unfettered  the  revolu- 
tion; but  they  have  more  important  business,  they  must 
waste  their  means  upon  useless  conspiracies  in  order  to 
deliver  their  friends  up  to  the  gallows,  and  to  keep  the 
executioners  at  work.  The  greatest  height,  however,  to 
which  their  revolutionary  determination  aspires,  is  in  the 
hope  that  one  day  they  may  be  able  to  overcome  their 
enemies  on  the  “field  of  battle”  with  equal  weapons.  As- 
tonishing gallantry  ! Father  Radetzky,  who  is  occupied 
night  and  day  with  murder,  expressed  himself  lately  with 
the  greatest  moral  indignation  after  the  Milanese  insur- 
rection about  “assassination.”  Lend  us  your  army  of 
murderers,  Father  Radetzky,  or  their  arms ; and  we  shall 
no  longer  need  any  “assassination”,  we  shall  then  murder 


22 


openly  in  “battle”  or  “by  court-martial”  according  to  your 
own  wishes.  Our  most  famous  revolutionists  are  wholly 
on  the  stand-point  of  Father  Radetzky.  They  allow  the 
enemy,  who  possesses  all  means  of  attack,  and  who  has 
put  all  the  means  of  defence  out  of  reach,  to  prescribe 
them  the  defence.  It  were  an  entirely  new  policy,  if  in 
the  circus  the  panther  should  let  the  buffalo  prescribe 
that  he  should  defend  himself  with  horns  against  the 
horns  of  the  buffalo  and  not  immorally  leap  on  its  back 
from  behind.  The  buffalo  Radetzky  demands  that  the 
revolutionists,  wholly  unarmed  as  they  are,  should  meet 
him,  after  a solemn  declaration  of  war , openly  and  in  ar- 
mies in  optima  forma  militari  with  cannons  and  ammuni- 
tion-waggons, with  cavalry  and  infantry.  Will  not  Mr. 
Kossuth  agree  with  him  ? 

After  the  outbreak  of  tbe  Hungarian  war,  the  journals 
announced  that  the  Hungarians  had  used  chain-balls,  but 
had  given  up  these  missiles  which  are  even  more  efficient 
than  the  Congreve  rocket  of  the  Austrians,  when 
Windischgraetz  informed  them  that  the  “usages  of  war” 
were  opposed  to  their  employment.  Poor  Hungarians ! 
If  it  is  possible  to  shoot  poison,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  you 
will  make  use  of  it  next  time. 

When  the  Austrians  had  entered  Raab.  the  reaction- 
ary journals  announced  with  most  extreme  moral  indig- 
that  the  meat  had  been  poisoned.  It  is  a pity  that 
the  Austrian  blood-hounds  did  not  devour  it.  But  there 
are  famous  revolutionists  who  consider  it  a greater  sin 
to  poison  an  army  of  sanguinary  blood-hounds  than  it 
would  be  to  poison  an  army  of  innocent  rats.  Suppose 
the  Swiss  at  Naples  or  the  Austrians  at  Milan  should 
some  day  die  of  poisoned  water  or  from  the  explosion 
of  their  barracks  with  fulminating  silver,  would  not  all 


the  genteel  republicans  lament  that  they  were  not  killed 
by  cannon-balls. 

Gentlemen,  physics  and  chemistry  may  become  more 
important  to  the  revolution  than  all  your  gallantry  and 
military  science.  If  with  help  of  poison  and  fire  we 
could  render  knights  and  generals  superfluous,  we  should 
have  the  double  advantage  of  getting  rid  not  only  of 
the  reaction  but  also  of  the  soldiery  established  by  them, 
which,  however,  as  it  seems,  the  “knights  and  heroes 
of  liberty”  would  retain  from  mere  pleasure  in  its  mot- 
ley romance,  even  if  there  were  no  more  enemies  to 
overcome.  When  we  perceive  how  little  certain  revo- 
lutionists endeavor  to  corrupt  the  armies  — the  most 
needed  thing  that  they  are  able  to  do  — we  are 
tempted  to  assume  that  they  are  afraid  they  might 
thereby  undermine  the  glorious  soldiery  in  principle 
also  for  themselves. 

Here  are  other  genteel  revolutionists  who  say,  “there 
are  things  that  may  be  done,  but  that  should  not  be 
proclaimed.  This  is  cowardice.  What  you  dare  not 
proclaim,  you  should  also  not  permit  to  be  done.  What- 
ever is  right  should  be  proclaimed  openly,  before  all 
the  world,  so  that  it  may  be  done  as  a right.  If  from 
practical  considerations,  the  particular  deed  still  needs 
secrecy,  the  grand  principles  of  our  deeds  should  spurn 
it.  I preach  the  murder  of  despots  openly,  because  it 
is  a right,  because  it  is  a duty,  because  it  is  the  on- 
ly means  to  save  humanity  from  the  rule  of  murder, 
and  because  it  must  be  acknowledged  to  be  universal- 
ly permitted  and  just.  I know  that  the  famous  leaders 
are  not  to  be  relied  upon,  that  they  care  more  for 
their  reputation  of  gentility  than  for  the  radical  revolu- 
tion, and  that  the  heads  of  the  reactionaries  are  safest 


24 


in  their  hands.  Therfore,  I endeavor  to  make  the  mur- 
der of  despots  a cause  of  the  people,  so  that  the  peo- 
ple may  without  considering  the  genteel  great  men 
murder  democratically  on  every  occasion , if  they  would 
live  democratically  after  the  revolution. 

But,  you  say,  why  do  I not  give  the  great  men  the 
good  example,  why  do  I not  myself  endeavor  to  carry 
out,  what  the  great  men  fail  to  do?  Spare  your  question, 
ye,  who  squander  the  means  of  action  on  every  adven- 
turer and  braggart,  that  he  may  waste  them  uselessly  or 
“deposit  them  at  interest  in  the  bank;”  who  do  not  even 
pay  the  men  of  sense  and  decision  for  the  paper  on 
which  they  could  chide  you  for  your  lack  of  sense,  your 
inactivity,  your  lack  of  energy,  your  littleness,  and  your 
wretchedness. 

But  enough.  The  doctrine  of  the  murder  of  tyrants 
must  be  short,  as  the  murder  itself.  Only  one  thing 
remains.  It  was  not  my  object  to  shed  blood  and  to 
annihilate  tyrants  on  paper,  in  order  to  secure  cheap 
alleviation  for  long-repressed  wrath  over  a world  full  of 
unprecedented  disgrace  and  disgraceful  acts.  It  was  my 
object,  in  the  first  place,  to  destroy  that  false  ethical 
code,  to  annihilate  the  “moral  scruples”  by  which  thou- 
sands, especially  of  our  country-men,  are  kept  from  de- 
cisive action,  even  when  free  opportunity  is  offered.  It 
was  my  object  to  vindicate  not  only  the  aims  of  the 
revolution,  but  also  its  means,  including  assassination, 
and  to  render  it  as  legitimate  as  the  tyrants  have  done 
with  their  murder  by  war,  their  “legal”  murder,  their 
murder  by  “court-martial.”  My  further  task  is  to  give 
hints  concerning  the  augmentation  and  application  of 
such  means.  The  safety  of  the  despots  rests  wholly  on 
the  preponderance  of  their  means  of  destruction.  Remove 


25 


their  soldiers,  or  only  spike  their  guns,  and  they  sink 
trembling  into  the  dust  and  whine  at  the  feet  of  their 
subjects.  The  first  aim  then,  must  be  to  do  away  with 
the  preponderance  of  engines  of  mass-destruction,  which 
we  do  not  and  cannot  possess,  by  means  of  the 
homeopathic  use,  as  it  were,  of  powerful  destructive  sub- 
stances which  it  would  cost  little  to  furnish  and  which 
might  be  obtained  or  prepared  with  little  risk  of  dis- 
covery. I am  neither  soldier,  nor  chemist,  nor  engin- 
eer, and  I must,  therefore,  leave  it  to  professional  men  to 
use  the  following  hints  for  further  inventions. 

1)  The  “Augsburg  General  Gazette”  of  the th  re- 

ports: “Yesterday  afternoon  the  most  terrible,  most  la- 
mentable event  of  modern  history  transpired.  When 
the  illustrious  crowned  heads  of  Germany,  who  had  as- 
sembled at  the  congress  of  monarchs  at  Vienna,  made 
an  excursion  by  railroad,  a fearful  explosion  was  heard 
at  a place  where  the  road  passes  a precipice  a hun- 
dred feet  high.  At  the  same  time,  the  locomotive  and 
the  entire  train  darted  over  the  precipice.  All  the 
monarchs  broke  their  necks,  and  only  two  mistresses  es- 
caped with  their  lives,  so  that,  at  present,  Germany  is 
without  monarchs.  An  investigation  showed  that  a rev- 
olutionary monster  had  laid  upon  the  rails  a small 
case  of  the  size  of  a thimble  filled  with  fulminating 
silver,  which  exploded  on  the  first  contact  with  the 
wheel  of  the  locomotive,  and  hurled  the  whole  train 
from  the  track.  A similar  accident  is  said  to  have 
overtaken  the  czar  of  Russia  in  the  vicinity  of  Warsaw.” 

2)  The  “Vienna  Gazette”  of  the th  writes:  “The 

guerrillas  of  the  Baconyan  Forest  now  use  the  following 
fearful  weapon,  which  is  calculated  to  render  individ- 
ual men  terrible  to  organized  masses.  They  have  guns 


26 


of  double  the  ordinary  thickness.  These  are  first  char- 
ged with  a strong  charge  of  powder,  and  on  top  of 
this  with  an  iron  capsule  fitting  the  barrel  exactly,  about 
four  inches  long,  and  conical  at  the  upper  end.  Inside 
of  this  capsule  there  is  another  smaller  one  filled  with 
powder  which  is  closed  at  the  upper  point  with  an 
easily  explosive  percussion-cap,  and  the  space  between 
the  inner  and  outer  capsule'  is  filled  with  poisoned  iron 
shot.  Whenever  this  charge  is  shot  against  some  ob- 
ject, the  capsule  explodes  and  scatters  a shower  of 
poisoned  shot,  each  grain  of  which  may  destroy  a hu- 
man life.  In  this  way  a single  man,  omnia  secum  por- 
tans,  may  become  dangerous  to  a hundred  opponents. 
Lately  such  a charge  was  fired  from  the  forest  upon 
a battalion  of  imperial  chasseurs,  and  wounded  sixty 
men  of  whom  on  the  next  day  fifty  had  died.’’ 

3)  The  “Prussian  State  Gazette”,  now  published  in 

Potsdam,  of  the th  writes : “Unfortunately  General 

Wrangel  failed  entirely  in  re-conquering  the  city  of 
Berlin,  which  is  now  wholly  in  possession  of  the  rev- 
olutionists. He  was  foiled  by  a desperate  mode  of  defence, 
by  which  the  rebels  demoralized  the  troops  completely.  At 
first  they  fired  iron  tubes  filled  with  melted  lead,  which 
scattered  a deathly  shower  on  the  advancing  battalions. 
Nevertheless  the  gallant  soldiers,  incited  by  the  Prince 
of  Prussia  with  the  prospect  of  pillaging  the  city  and  of 
executing  all  the  revolutionists  on  the  spot,  penetrated 
into  several  avenues.  But  here  they  were  cut  down  in 
companies  by  explosive  bombs  which  suddenly  burst 
forth  from  the  pavement  of  the  street,  and  which  did 
such  terrible  execution,  that  even  the  most  gallant 
soldiers  could  not  be  induced  to  proceed  further,  since 
at  every  step  they  had  to  fear  a fresh  explosion.  It  is 


27 


said  that  these  explosive  bombs  consist  of  shells  filled 
with  powder  and  furnished  with  a percussion  hammer, 
which  are  buried  beneath  the  pavement  in  places  which 
the  enemy  cannot  discover,  in  such  a way  that  the 
hammer  acts  as  soon  as  a foot  steps  on  the  stone  pla- 
ced over  it.  It  is  said  the  revolutionists  have  laid  in  every 
avenue  such  a number  of  similar  bombs,  that  the  cap- 
ture of  the  city  would  cost  the  lives  of  100,000  soldiers. 
It  seems  that  the  men  of  the  revolution  no  longer  deem 
it  necessary  to  imperil  their  lives  in  a useless  martyrdom, 
if  mere  machines  can  assure  their  success.  A significant 
sign  of  the  times ! As  soon  as  our  present  mode  of  war- 
fare is  overthrown  and  disorganized,  the  army  and  the 
monarchs  are  lost.” 

4)  The  “Milanese  Gazette”  of  the th  reports  : “The 

party  of  despair  has  now  recourse  to  truly  diabolical 
means.  Every  one  who  is  of  any  value  for  the  order 
and  morality  of  society,  must  tremble  day  and  night 
for  his  life.  Poison  is  the  universal  watchword  of  the 
revolutionists,  since  they  are  deprived  of  all  other  weap- 
ons. Cases  of  poisoning  the  victuals,  the  water,  the  to- 
bacco, etc.  for  the  soldiers,  we  have  previously  reported. 
But  their  hellish  invention  has  gone  farther.  Every  knife, 
every  dagger,  every  pin  that  is  drawn  against  the  men 
of  order,  is  now  poisoned.  For  this  purpose  they  use 
strychnine,  Prussic  acid,  etc,  nay,  even  the  blood  of  corpses. 

“With  unexampled  refinement  of  cruelty,  they  use 
as  a poison  even  the  pus  of  revolutionists  who  rotted  to 
death  in  dungeons,  and  direct  the  weapons  so  poisoned 
against  the  most  sacred  lives.  Thus  the  general  of  the 
jesuits  and  two  cardinals  were  wounded  lately  in  this 
fashion,  they  will  die  within  three  days  ; and  His  Holi- 
ness escaped  a similar  fate  only  by  the  cushion  of  fat 
in  which  the  arrow  lodged. 


28 


“For  the  poisoning  of  bullets,  the  revolutionists,  who 
are  now  everywhere  zealously  engaged  in  the  study  of 
physics  and  chemistry,  use  only  poisons  that  are  not 
too  readily  volatilized  by  heat.  The}7  also  use  glass  bul- 
lets filled  with  quicksilver  and  even  with  Prussic  acid, 
which,  of  course,  kill  without  fail,  if  their  contents  come 
in  contact  with  the  blood.  In  filling  hollow  metal  balls 
with  less  refractory  poison,  they  mix  these  first  with  wax 
or  tallow,  in  order  to  avoid  their  volatilization  as  much 
as  possible. 

“From  windows,  cellars,  holes  in  walls,  etc.  they  usu- 
ally discharge  their  poisoned  missiles  from  air-guns,  so 
that  no  explosion  is  heard.  But  since  several  of  these 
weajrons,  too,  have  been  discovered,  the  monsters  use 
simple  trunks  or  pipe-stems,  one  or  two  feet  long,  made 
of  tin  or  wood,  nay,  even  maccaroni-tubes,  from  which 
they  blow  against  their  victims  everywhere,  even  in 
churches,  peas  and  small  arrows  with  poisoned  barbed 
points.  They  need  only  scratch  the  skin,  in  order  to 
produce  a deadly  effect,  and  the  discovery  of  the  per- 
petrator is  rarely  possible. 

“ Our  whole  art  of  war  and  all  our  cannons  are 
powerless  against  this  homeopathic  war  of  a diabolical 
party.  It  is  a terrible  task  in  these  times  to  be  a 
man  of  order.  Even  loyal  men  express  the  doubt 
that  order  has  been  carried  too  far.  But  how  is  it 
possible  to  be  moderate  in  order?  We  must  now 
murder  all,  or  we  shall  all  be  murdered.  Merciful 
Providence  ! do  not  abandon  us  ! ” 

5)  A con-espondent  of  “La  France”  vouches  for  the 
following  communication : “ The  ingenuity  of  the  men 

of  the  revolution  in  the  production  of  new  means  of 
destruction  is  equaled  by  the  caution  practiced  in  the 


29 


organization  and  disposition  of  their  agents.  At  the  head 
of  their  assassins,  whom  they  call  liberators,  is  a single 
person,  whose  name  has  not  been  mentioned  yet  in  the 
revolutionary  world  but  who,  on  account  of  his  reliabili- 
ty and  astuteness,  enjoys  the  full  confidence  of  the  prin- 
cipal leaders.  This  person  continually  receives  consider- 
able sums  of  money,  without  his  knowing  whence  they 
come.  It  is  his  principal  task  to  have  new  means  of 
destruction  invented  and  manufactured,  and  to  engage 
reliable  agents  that  use  them.  These  assistants,  fanat- 
ical men  of  extreme  determination  and  reliability',  ex- 
ist under  all  possible  characters,  do  not  not  know  each 
other,  and  converse  singly  with  their  chief  who  visits 
them  in  their  residences,  and  whose  domicile  they  do 
not  know.  It  is  said  that  in  France  and  Italy  alone 
there  are  several  hundred  of  these  agents.  It  is  so 
much  the  more  difficult  to  escape  them,  since,  if  an 
especially  important  person  is  the  victim,  they  are  all 
directed  at  the  same  time  against  him.  If  one  of  these 
should  be  discovered  and  arrested,  he  could  not  betray 
the  others,  even  if  he  should  wish  to  do  so,  and  these 
others  are  at  once  busy  to  take  his  place  and  to  avenge 
him. 

“This  organization  of  assassins  is  wholly  independent. 
But  besides  there  is  the  great  revolutionary  organiza- 
tion ready  to  embrace  at  once  the  opportunity  for 
seizing  control,  if  the  victim  that  obstructed  its  path, 
should  have  fallen. 

“His  Majesty  has  not  been  able  to  leave  the  Tuileries 
during  the  past  few  weeks,  because  his  life  was  threat- 
ened on  all  sides,  although  no  one  knows  how  and  by 
whom  ” 


6)  The  “Moniteur”  of  the th  writes:  “His  Ma- 


30 


jesty  the  Emperor  Louis  Napoleon  and  the  palace  of  the 
Tuileries  are  no  more.  The  palace  was  last  night  sud- 
denly blown  up  by  a terrible  explosion,  and  burried 
under  its  ruins  the  emperor  and  the  entire  court,  that 
was  just  assembled  around  him.  A fearful  coup  d'etat- 
The  explosion  was  brought  about  by  a few  copper 
balls  about  the  size  of  a man’s  head.  These  balls  had 
been  made  by  some  revolutionist  and  placed  in  a low- 
er story  by  a soldier.  The  greater  part  of  each  ball 
waB  filled  with  nitro-glycerine  or,  as  some  maintain, 
with  carbonic  acid  which,  as  is  well  known,  has  by 
far  more  explosive  power  than  powder,  and  which  ex- 
plodes by  a simple  elevation  of  temperature  (Its  effi- 
ciency is  greatly  increased  if  the  carbonic  acid  is  first 
liquified  by  compression.)  In  order  to  effect  the  heat- 
ing of  the  gas  in  the  ball,  the  latter  had  been  fur- 
nished with  works  whose  index  ignited  a small  quantity 
of  phosphorous  and  powder  by  rapid  friction,  half  an 
hour  after  the  placing  of  the  balls.  In  order  to  avoid 
the  elevation  of  temperature  from  the  outside  and,  conse- 
quently, a premature  explosion,  the  balls  were  encased 
in  ice,  and,  to  avoid  igmition  by  some  shock  on  rolling 
them  into  the  cellar,  the  ■whole  was  covered  with  a coat 
of  India  rubber.  Such  effective  means  only  the  revolu- 
tionists could  use.  But  the  time  for  lamenting  is  over, 
and  a new  era  begins.  The  revolution  has  conquered; 
and  the  victor  is  right.  The  “Moniteur”  always  serves 
the  conqueror.  Vae  vied  a ! ” 


OTHER  WRITINGS  BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR. 


Six  Letters  to  a Pious  Man, 

25  Cents. 

Mankind,  the  Criminal, 

- 10  “ 

The  true  Character  of  Humboldt, 

(AN  ORATION.) 

20  “ 

Lessons  of  a Century,  - 

- 20 

What  is  Humanity? 

20  “ 

Communism  and  Socialism 

• 25  - 

